There is an ongoing need to facilitate easy dynamic ad-hoc and flexible video and/or audio telecommunications using multiple input/output resources on different types of computing device, such as laptop computers, smartphones, personal computers, wearable computing devices, tablet computers and others. Often a party to a video and/or audio call may wish to use more than one computing device during a call, may wish to switch between different computing devices during a call, or want to easily connect several local devices to one call. Existing approaches for enabling these scenarios involve manually adding different telecommunication devices to a call. This is time consuming and cumbersome for the end user, who is trying to concentrate on the call itself, rather than the technology.
Proximate communications devices are able to communicate using Bluetooth (trade mark) technology, for example, to enable a Bluetooth headset to act as the audio input/output for a video call on a proximate smartphone. However, many end users do not make use of this type of Bluetooth and similar connection methods because of security risks and/or because of complexity or not knowing how to use the functionality. Besides, manual configuration is typically required on both devices, with an initial pairing operation and then a connection each time, as well as constant re-pairing if devices are shared by multiple users. However, even if this is accomplished, such a connection only allows for the reasonable simple relay of an audio connection. Switching devices dynamically during a video/audio call is generally not possible, so users typically use the workaround of hanging up a call on one device and calling again from a different device, breaking the flow of the call. Adding a second local video window to one side of a dyadic video call in progress is also difficult. A workaround would be for the local user to create and use a second service username on a second device and then dial into the call with that device's audio muted, effectively creating a multi-party call with two video captures on one end. Such workarounds are clearly onerous and limited in their utility.
The embodiments described below are not limited to implementations which solve any or all of the disadvantages of known video/audio telecommunications systems.